Monday, October 13, 2008

My uncle Gino's advice

When I look at my face in the mirror while shaving my beard, I always think of
my uncle Gino from Toronto, who used to give investment advice (he had his own
investment letter for many years). One morning, the only morning I stayed at his
home near Toronto, he told me that I did not need to hurry when shaving, as this
would not finish the job more quickly. "Just do it quietly," he
suggested.

This morning I had to think of my uncle Gino's advice when I
was hurrying back to my computer to finish a post I've wanted to write for a
long time, about visions of the future of finance in the global system. Why
should I be in a hurry, I said to myself, if it won't speed the writing of a
good piece?

The picture shows my uncle Gino in his youth, in the
Netherlands. He died a couple of years ago, in Canada, the country that had
become his new home when he emigrated in the late 1940s or early 1950s. I know
him as one of my many uncles and aunts in Canada (my brother also lives in
Canada). Gino was a successful investment adviser until he lost his money, not
because of an international credit or debt crisis but because of something
else.

PS: I see that the original date of drafting the first two
paragraphs of this post appears as the date of this post. However, today it's 25
November 2008 and not 13 October 2008, so "normally" I would have felt that I
should hurry to finally finish that post on visions of the future. But,
listening to my uncle Gino's advice and seeing the speed of information and the
speed of financial transactions as one of the problems of global finance and
development, I know that slow writing (and slow financial transactions) may make
a better contribution to world stability than all this frenzy chasing after
financial news and financial opportunities.

Es esa locura de "breaking
news" y "today's financial opportunities" (Act now!) en que vivimos que es una
de las causas de la crisis... It is this madness of "breaking news" and "today's
financial opportunities" in which we are living that is one of the origins of
the crisis...

About Me

As a kid I liked numbers and the sound of strings. I considered studying engineering but chose social sciences because of my interest in people. I combine a theoretical interest with a practical, social approach which brought me to the sphere of policy research. I am interested in reducing the disparity between poor and rich, between the powerful and the less powerful.
In 1973 and 1982 I lived in Latin America. In the mid-1980s, I was able to create an international forum to discuss the functioning of the international monetary system and the debt crisis, the Forum on Debt and Development (FONDAD). I established it with the view that the debt crisis of the 1980s was a symptom of a malfunctioning, flawed global monetary and financial system.
I was one of the driving forces behind the creation of the European Network on Debt and Development that was established at the end of the 1980s to help put pressure on European policymakers.
In 1990, before the beginning of the Gulf War, I cofounded the Golfgroep, a discussion group about international politics comprising journalists, scientists, politicians and activists that meets regularly.
The website of FONDAD is www.fondad.org